The state bleeds money and resources as two formidable players ascend – the ruthless drug cartels, and the powerful prison guards union. There’s a fortune at stake as the world’s eighth largest economy becomes a battlefield.

It’s up to the governor now to keep everything from boiling over. Unless the governor has other ideas.

MedicineLand

Dr. Julia Beltran is a geneticist searching for the master control gene for human aging. If she finds it, you’ll never die.

Adam LaPorte is a former methamphetamine super-lab cook. Why is he now being paid a small fortune to bake snack cakes for the California Department of Corrections?

What if a new strain of methamphetamine could shut down the master control gene for aging? What if it could also shut down much of the brain’s frontal cortex? Eternal life or a chemical lobotomy – it’s all in the application.

Somewhere in the capitol building, consideration is given to a bold new way of pacifying the burgeoning prison population. Because if those felons can be reduced to mindless zombies, it might not matter if they live forever.

Finding the secret to eternal life was the easy part. The hard part is keeping it out of the governor’s hands.

It does work! It’s moving along at a great clip, I’m very interested in the characters and the cloning (and this from a non-science English teacher), and I can’t wait for the next chapter! I was amused by the “beats grading papers” line… because that’s what I should be doing. Thanks for the terrific distraction!